AK Hello and welcome to the Global development podcast. I'm Annie Kelly and in this episode we'll be looking at the hugely complex issue of modern-day slavery. We'll be asking why more than 150 years after global slavery was abolished, an estimated 21 million people are trapped in some form of forced labour. What does slavery look like in today's globalised labour market? And who is profiting from the global trade in people? We'll discuss these issues in just a moment.

According to the United Nations, people-trafficking is the world's third largest criminal industry. And the international labour organisation estimates the profits from global forced labour to be at least $44bn a year. But as we'll hear later, reliable data on this issue is thin on the ground, making it difficult to really assess the scale and scope of the modern-day slave trade.

With me today I have three guests who've been tackling these issues head on. But before we get into the discussion let's hear from Leonardo Sakamoto, a journalist and activist, who's been tracking forced and bonded labour in the Brazilian Amazon and pioneering what he considers a new approach to ending the criminal exploitation he's witnessed there.

I spoke to him earlier today and started by asking him how the slave trade operates in Brazil.

LS Slave labour is illegal in Brazil since May 13 1888, of course, but this kind of exploitation is still used in the way of cutting costs in the very competitive environment. You have slave labour. You have illegal work connected in legal networks of trades, of networks of production in Brazil.

AK And can you tell me a bit about the conditions that you've witnessed first-hand in Brazil, so the conditions of some of the workers engaged in this kind of forced labour?

LS The conditions depends where the place where the workers were found in the slave labour situation. When you see workers in areas in the Amazon, the conditions are the worst possible. The workers don't receive enough food for their needs. The workers, they must make camps inside the jungle. The workers don't have access to salaries. The workers are sometimes are threatened to death. And sometimes the workers have to pay for their own tools to work. Sometimes you see very big cattle ranches – there is a care of the workers that is smaller than the care of the cattle.

AK Why or how is this being allowed to continue in Brazil?

LS They used to say here in Brazil that slavery is sustained by a tripod: poverty, impunity and greed. And of course poverty is a very bad condition, the lack of opportunities. We're not talking about just money, we're talking about the conditions to have a good life. And this is the first. And they push the workers to try jobs in very far places with no share that we receive, for example.

Second, we have the impunity even [though] the Brazilian government, Brazilian state, has been getting good goals, good advances [in] the last 18 years of fighting against slavery in the country. We're still facing problems to get rich people that are using slave labour in jail, for example.

And the third, of course, people use slave labour in Brazil not because they are evil, we're not talking about … it's not a moral issue it's about an economic issue. The people use slave labour in the way to cutting down costs in their production.

I like to say that slavery is not a disease, slavery is a symptom. If you take malaria, for example, if you use just a medicine, just a pill to headache you will die. In the same way if you stay and rescue workers, for example, it's good everybody will see it's OK, it's good to rescue workers but we need to go beyond not just rescue workers but to change our model of development; that is the disease. Our model of development excludes concentrate wealth and create problems, for example, to the worker that has their own lands to plant and to produce. And this model is seen in the last ways responsible for the slavery in Brazil.

AK Leonardo Sakamoto talking to me earlier from Brazil. So on the panel today: on the line from Beirut we have Beate Andrees, head of the special action programme to combat forced labour at the International Labour Organisation; and with me in the studio Romana Cacchioli from Anti-Slavery International; and Andrew Wallis, the chief executive of Unseen, a UK-based anti-trafficking organisation. Thank you all for taking part.

So let's get into it. What exactly do we mean when we talk about modern-day slavery? Romana, can you help us define this?

RC Well for people at the coal face, if you like, in slavery it's about being treated as property. It's about being controlled. It's about a denial of all their rights and I mean all of those rights. It's about being forced to work, coerced to work under threat. It's about having your freedom of movement curtailed and, in some cases, people fall into slavery or are forced into slavery because of debt. Other times it's because of the low status of individuals get caught up in debts or in situations where they can't remove themselves. So, essentially, for people in slavery, it's about control and it's about being treated as property and as a workforce, an engine to be exploited for, usually, commercial gain, for financial gain.

AK And Beate, slavery is obviously defined in various international conventions and under various international codes of law. Can you just explain a little bit about that and how slavery is defined on an international legal platform?

BA Yes indeed. There are a variety of international instruments to define slavery and related practice such as forced labour, debt bondage and trafficking in persons. The first instrument was adopted in 1926 by the League of Nations, the slavery convention. And then we had subsequent instruments; one, for instance, adopted by the ILO in 1930 defining forced labour. And then the most recent one, the trafficking in persons protocol adopted by the UN in 2000.

I think what's the common element of all these definitions is pretty much what Romana just said; it's the element of coercion, it's the element of overbearing a person's power and it's often through deceit, false promises, a way of treating people as commodities and not as workers, restraining their free choices and decision-making power over the conditions of their work. So, essentially, the key element is really coercion. These forms of coercion can be very subtle in modern times. People are not held in chains; in most of the cases they are really, in principle, free to, by law at least, to leave, but they are constrained. And that's precisely what [constitutes] slavery today.

AK And that's a very complex issue isn't it, because you ask where do you draw that line between cheap labour or exploited labour and then forced or slave labour. I mean …

BA Absolutely.

AK Andrew, do you think that part of the problem is that slavery in today's globalised labour market is really hard to define and it's really hard for consumers to recognise as well?

AW Yes it is. It's also really important in terms of how we express what slavery is, how we understand it because that then leads to how we're going to tackle it. So, for me, I think the understanding around it is a form of illicit trade where a human being has been commodified in order to earn their slaver vast profits, in some cases with very little risk of being caught. And so the motivation for someone commodifying and enslaving someone is a financial motivation.

Now that then works out in terms of the globalised labour trade because there are two issues at play: one is the demand that we have for cheap goods. And as soon as you put that demand into the equation it works its way down a supply chain and creates vulnerabilities where you're going to have to have slaves involved. And on the other side you have an illicit trade with very smart business people that are looking to make profit and their commodity is trading in human beings.

AK And, Beate, Andrew's raised some really interesting points there. I wanted to ask you why is it that the ILO uses the term "forced labour" instead of the word "slavery"? Can you tell me about some of the subtleties around that?

BA Well first of all it's because we … by mandate from the Forced Labour Convention that was adopted in 1930 in which it was very much meant as a complementary tool to the slavery convention, it was meant to address, in particular, state-imposed forced labour, and at the time, forced labour imposed by the colonial states in particular. One problem I have with the notion of trade and the definition which you have in the slavery convention, the condition of ownership, it kinds of misleads us in understanding the more subtle and modern forms of slavery. And I think what you have in the definition of forced labour, the ILO definition, is basically the focus on coercion, it's the manners of penalty, it's to understand how people are constrained in their choices.

So sometimes these people end up in a situation of forced labour without any deception, without any intermediary; they're not being traded in a sense as they were traded 200 years ago. They just end up in a situation of forced labour because they're in a very vulnerable situation and they have no bargaining power. So I think in this sense the definition of forced labour is very helpful because it helps us focus on the exploitation and less so on the transaction that may or may not precede a situation of exploitation.

AK I guess one of the problems is when you've got a word like coercion it's really, really hard to define exactly what is coercion and what is willingness on the part of the person who is being exploited. I mean, Romana, in terms of your work at Anti-Slavery International, how do you see those issues playing out?

RC I would totally agree with what Beate's saying, actually. I think that sometimes it is a bit of a distraction really to focus too much on the issue, to sort of look at it in terms of a trade and a movement of people, because actually what we're really all working towards is to stop the exploitation, the gross exploitation of people. So I also agree with Beate that the Forced Labour Convention is the most helpful because that's what covers most of the forms, the contemporary forms of slavery today in the world, whether we're looking at bonded labour in South Asia or even child labour, the worst forms of child labour; trafficking is the movement of people. But at the end of that there has to be an exploitation and, for the most part, that is in labour exploitation; the big numbers of people who are trafficked are in fact trafficked for labour. And the coercion is central.

AK And we heard Leonardo earlier saying that this wasn't a moral issue it was an economic issue, Andrew, would you agree with that?

AW I think it can be both because I think in some of the equation, the morality is around the demand that then creates the environment for that slavery to exist. But maybe the dividing line between what is exploitative behaviour and what then tips us over that line into slavery is around the issue of is that person free to leave. So if they're not, and that could be a whole number of reasons why they can't leave, they could just be in an exploitative situation but they could walk away from that situation. Is that slavery? For my definition, no, it isn't, because the moment that someone is not free to leave, they're coerced and they're controlled, they've become a commodity. And actually that state goes all the way back to slavery thousands of years ago, which is where a human being is a commodity. So in the Roman Empire, the view of a slave was, well, it's just like a hammer: I can use it as a tool and then if it breaks I just toss it away. That still exists today in terms of that's what slavery is. So, yes, that's a moral issue around should a fellow human being be viewed as just a commodity to be used?

But then the economic issues are also in play as well, in terms of complex supply chains, the desire to have cheap goods and all of that then plays in and creates an environment in which the illicit trade in human beings can take place.

AK It's probably quite a good moment now to read a comment from guardian.co.uk. One of our readers, degutsdeybust has just come back from working in India and he can't believe that the statistic of 21 million people trapped in forced labour can be accurate. But he says maybe it depends on the definitions. And he says: "In India there are around 300 million people who are routinely excluded from normal life because of their caste and many who have no option but to work cleaning out latrines or sewers. How do we address this kind of slavery when people aren't necessarily forced into this work but when there are no other options? What's the difference between this and slavery?" Romana, have you got anything to …

RC Yes, I do understand where he's coming from because it is really hard. And I'm sure Beate will also agree that it's very difficult to draw the line, so you have a continuum and I think that's how, as Andrew was saying, a continuum of practices of experiences from the worst end where people are really enslaved, they can't move, they're forced to work, all their rights are completely taken away from them; right down to exploitative labour; you know you're working overtime perhaps and not being paid for it. So a whole continuum range of experiences. In India, it is true and the majority of people who are in bonded labour are from the Dalit or tribal castes.

AK Can you just very briefly explain exactly what you mean by bonded labour?

RC So, bonded labour is that people are coerced into forced labour, forced to work to pay off a debt. So they've incurred a debt often for either subsistence or to pay medical costs or marriage costs or even migration costs; in India that's what we're finding more and more is that people are migrating to work, they have to take a loan and then they end up working and not being paid and not being aware how much they owe. And that debt, then with interest, accrues and they may not be able to leave that job. They may be coerced, forced to work under threat of violence. And so there are many, many hundreds of thousands of people who are really in that very dire situation. But discrimination is pervasive in India and not everybody who is a Dalit or from a tribal group will be in a situation of bonded or forced labour.

AK So, Beate, you heard there that our commenter doesn't believe that the ILO's figure of 21 million people can be accurate. Do you believe that it truly reflects the scale of the problem on a global level?

BA Well, absolutely, otherwise we wouldn't have published it. But I should probably include one caveat and we said it very clearly in our report: that this is based on the best possible methodology and data available today. We think it is a conservative number, it could well be higher, it's unlikely that it is lower. But as long as we don't have reliable national estimates, we can't have a more reliable figure.

Now, of course, it depends a little bit, the scale of the problem, and the measurement depends on how you define it, that's very clear. We have based our estimate on the ILO's definition of forced labour, which means that the cases we have verified and counted as a forced labour case have to have an element or coercion. So the simple fact that you are in a vulnerable situation in itself is not forced labour. There has to be an intent on the part of the employer, the abuser, to exploit the person for financial gain.

AK Andrew, really briefly, what conclusions do you believe we can draw from the fact that the ILO is saying that this is a conservative estimate because it's only based on the available national data that it's been able to acquire?

AW I think there's three issues at play. One is the issue around definition; what are we talking about and where's the dividing line between what's slavery and what isn't? Whenever you have definitions that you've got to get governments to agree to you always have a race to the bottom; what's the lowest common denominator that everybody can agree on. So that then immediately skews your figures, I would argue.

Secondly, I think there's a systemic fear at government level and a society level to actually be honest and say, regardless of abolishing slavery 200 plus years ago, we still have slavery. So I think we have to have that honest debate at government level, at society level, that says this is still a problem that exists. Therefore you then get the impetus to actually shine a light on it. And that then leads to the data issue, which you know the ILO have identified it, we identified it in terms of the report that's just come out, which is to try and get hard and fast data is next to impossible for all the reasons that have just been listed. But also I think it's just this, do we want to lift this rock knowing underneath there's this gunk that we've got to look at. And my observation is we don't.

AK Well, thank you all. We'll be back in a minute.

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AK So, as we've been discussing, slavery is a global problem and I wanted to try and really unpick what are the big underlying structural causes of the modern day slave trade. Romana?

RC A weak legal framework; so weak laws, weak enforcement; where we have laws they're not enforced. Discrimination, because often the people who are in situations of slavery come from groups that are marginalised in society and so they're very vulnerable. Other factors which, sort of push factors, if you like, can be conflict, migration and food scarcity issues which force families and their children out to work; it's a whole myriad really of push factors and reasons why slavery continues today and is with us today. Is that the question you asked me, I can't remember?

AK And, Beate, have you got anything to add to that from your work collecting this data in your office at the ILO?

BA I think Romana has summarised it very nicely. The key structural causes are very much linked to big institutions in a broad sense, not just laws but also ministries, governance in a broader sense. And the other one we see very clearly coming out of all of our research is indeed discrimination.

AK Andrew, your organisation, Unseen, was recently involved in a study looking at the scale of modern slavery here in the UK. What were the main points that you took from that?

AW So the Centre for Social Justice commissioned in effect what was a two-year, evidence-led review of what was the state of modern slavery in the United Kingdom. So, yes, it was UK-focused but obviously we were all aware of the global context. I think right off the top what we discovered was a lack of leadership on this issue. And probably problematic within that as well was wanting to see the issue framed just within an immigration debate. And yet if you look at the legal structure, the UK, and increasingly around the globe, what you have is legislation that views it as a criminal act. So you have a perpetrator of a crime and you have a victim of crime. And in the globalised world we need to move it away from just being a debate about immigration and I think we need to move it back to being a debate about: here is a crime that's taken place.

We also found that data was a big issue, which, in trying to ask the question what is the size of the problem, we took the decision very early on that we would not be able to answer that question. So here's a first-world country, and the UK government would admit this as well, that we have no handle on the data. The only data we have are those that have chosen to access the government's care programme. But we know, as an organisation, that isn't the true figure; and whether you talk to law enforcement, statutory agencies, everybody will tell you that is not a true figure.

AK And obviously behind that data are the people who are affected by this globalised labour situation. Let's hear from someone now with direct experience of being trafficked into the UK. Last week, reporter Harriet Grant interviewed a young woman originally from China, who says she was a victim of forced labour by a criminal gang. Her name's been changed to protect her identity.

HG In a cramped bedsit in a northern English town Min talks about the man who brought her here from China. She tells me that her family were being harassed by the police because they were followers of the banned spiritual group Falun Gong. So her grandmother put her into the hands of a man who said he could help her get to Britain, where he said the government would offer her protection and the chance of a new life.

"He brought me to Shanghai to get on the plane and then someone else met me on the other side. He brought me to a house where I stayed for a long time. I was just locked inside the house. They told me that I could not escape and if I tried they would kill my grandmother in China, that it was dangerous for me to escape."

After taking a boat, then a train, still confused about where she was, their final destination was a cannabis factory in England where she was again held prisoner.

"I had to tend to the plants, water, pick them and fertilise them. They said that if I didn't my grandmother would have to pay money and that if I escaped they would kill her. I was really scared."

In 2008, the police discovered the factory and closed it down. Despite telling them what had happened to her, Min was charged with cannabis cultivation and sentenced to 12 months in prison. It was only after she finished the sentence that the UK Border Agency acknowledged she was reasonably likely to be a victim of trafficking. Last year they wrote to Min saying that because she escaped from that situation, she cannot now be described as a victim of trafficking, even though they do accept she was under the control of her trafficker when arrested. The letter tells her that as a foreign criminal, she's now subject to deportation for the public good.

Min has a life in England now. She's pregnant and frightened about being sent home where her trafficker might find her. There's a test case at the Court of Appeal in May that is going to look at four cases similar to Min's. When I spoke to Min's lawyer, Hani Zubeidi at Fadiga & Co, he told me that he hopes these cases will set a precedent which will allow Min to challenge her own conviction. Until then she waits, unable to sleep at night, fearful of being sent home, branded a foreign criminal.

AW Unfortunately her case is atypical. Just going through her story, you've got issues of a misunderstanding around immigration; you have criminalisation of a victim; you have identification of that victim but then being told but you're still an immigrant therefore we're going to turf you out of the country. So not only do we not recognise the victim, but we then penalise that victim. And then that plays into other issues around what is the awareness within statutory agencies and front-line agencies of what is being presented in front of them. Is it a cannabis factory with a drug cultivator; or is it actually a victim of crime who is there against their will, who, under the threat of violence, coercion, fear of retribution to their family is held there and will work there? And then behind that you have, well, why are they in this country producing cannabis in the first place? Because society wants a demand for it. The UK is now net exporter of cannabis. So there's your pull factor into the UK. And where's our reintegration of survivors? That individual remains vulnerable. If returned to the situation where they've come from, in all likelihood will be retrafficked. And so there are so many issues at play that just basically shows you, to quote The Thick of It, an omnishambles of a response.

AK And, Beate, do you have a response to that? Obviously, that goes back to a lot of what you were saying when you were defining forced labour for us at the beginning of the programme.

BA Yes, absolutely. You have all the elements here: the deception, restriction of the freedom of movements, where that's a clear case of trafficking. And what it really shows is the failure of identification systems. It should have been, from the beginning, this person should have received assistance, there should have been no doubts about her circumstances. And yet it just didn't happen. And it's very symptomatic, particularly for workers and sectors that are informal, so, obviously, cannabis production is an illegal activity in most countries, but also the sex industry is a very typical, not being protected as victims of forced labour. The same is true for other activities like forced begging or more formal activities, domestic work and even construction and so on.

So I think it's a clear problem here to properly identify potential victims and then provide them with the necessary care.

AK OK. And we had a question from a listener that kind of ties into this. ValentinaCaron, who worked for an NGO in Cambodia, this is what she wrote to us. She said: "It's a shame that western donors rarely include activities like police training, I'm not saying that giving money for children's education is less important, but I feel that police training could really change the legal environment in which the Cambodian people live. Without an effective implementation of the international standards that bind Cambodia, it would never be possible to have this justice." She's offering some kind of solution. Romana, obviously Anti-Slavery International, a global organisation, have you seen these kind of issues that play around …

RC Absolutely. I think we would all agree that we need better training and awareness-raising amongst law enforcement. But immigration officers, particularly on many of the borders in the global south, but also immigration officers in Europe, but all criminal justice actors. So for the UK it would be about the CPS, the Crown Prosecution Service, clearly being able to access, not just the police being able to identify a potential victim of trafficking but it's also the criminal justice actors all the way through, right through to judges. And also being able to communicate that to juries in trafficking trials so that clearly victims' stories are well represented because they're very complex stories often.

If we look at a couple of cases that have been held here in the UK on domestic servitude, trafficking for domestic servitude, where you've got issues around witchcraft and how children have been, or adults have been controlled through issues around witchcraft, this really needs to be unpacked, so there has to be a real understanding by all actors that are working to what are the patterns of trafficking, what are the coercive methods that are used? And what are the areas of exploitation, because as we've heard, cannabis … who would have thought that people are being trafficked into cannabis a few years ago? So this is an emerging area where now we're finding people are being trafficked into criminal activities like forced begging, many Roma and Bulgarians on the streets of London and elsewhere that are being forced to beg. And this is a new area.

AK Do you think that part of the problem is, is that it has evolved, it has changed? So if you ask maybe the average person on the street here in the UK: what is slavery today? they may think of children in brick kilns in Pakistan; they may not think that it happens here in the UK or in other developed nations. And I just wonder whether there was that problem with the language that's being used, people not understanding the different types of modern day slavery that are going on; what's the difference between someone who's been trafficked, what's the difference between that and migration patterns? It's a very complex language being used.

RC It is complex. And it's also going back to that image of expecting people in slavery to be in chains, and it's not at all like that now. And it's not just people being locked into factories. It's also people, you know, could be working in a bar or in restaurants, in construction, so forced labour situations are really around us all the time. It's just that we're not seeing it in that sort of framework, really.

AK And Beate was mentioning earlier that she felt that there had been progress made by some national governments in acknowledging this problem; I was wondering in terms of the anti-slavery movement, the NGOs, the civil society groups who are working on this issue, do you believe that you're really making an impact in global efforts to end slavery?

RC I think we are. Sometimes I think it's a drop in the ocean. But I think agree with Beate there has been a movement over the last few years to recognise the issue and the importance of the issue. Over the last 10 years the issue has become more and more at the top of the political agenda. Of course we're not there yet. I wouldn't want to pat anybody on the back, we need to do a lot more. In terms of civil society I think there are lots more … we've got business that are coming on board now as well, so I think it's about everybody being involved in this campaign, everybody being aware of what it is and being able to identify it and report it to the authorities when they see it.

AK And Andrew, you actually come from a corporate background, don't you? I was wondering what your views on this might be? Do you think that things need to change if we're really going to make strides forward?

AW I'm going to be slightly controversial and I think what we've got better at is identifying it. Have we got better at eradicating it? I don't think we have. And I think it's an issue of systems process. So systems deliver processes and deliver results. And if you look across the globe and say, well, what are the results five years, 10 years, 100 years? The results are we have slaves. The results are: there are very few prosecutions. The results are: it's a high-return, low-risk industry to be involved in. And if you approach it as a commercial business, and back to what I was saying earlier about let's frame it as an illicit trade, and let's understand that the people that get involved in this and turn human beings into a commodity are doing it for business reasons, they're doing it to make money, they're doing it to get a return on their commodity. Then, are we winning? No, we're not. And I think there's a whole list of reasons why we're not. I think governments are glued to bureaucratic response and traffickers are, like, fair enough, carry on doing that, because we're fast, we're nimble, we're lean and mean and we can evolve.

So I actually think we need to be honest with ourselves, be it the NGO community, government community or the business community, and say are we actually tackling this and dismantling it? And I would say we're not. I think we can do it. I think the tools are there to enable us to do it, but is the will there, is the political will there, is the will there amongst NGOs to do it, is the will there within society to change practices that create the demand and the pulls for slavery to exist?

AK So, our appetite for cheap products as well, I imagine?

AW For sure.

RC I do hear what you're saying, Andrew, but I do also think that things have come a long way, honestly, in the last 10 years. We wouldn't have been having this conversation. It was really difficult to get any journalist or anybody to talk about slavery and forced labour. And just in the last 10 years, when you see the proliferation of NGOs just in the UK working on this issue. I mean for a very long time, Anti-Slavery International was one of the only organisations working, and the ILO of course, Beate of course, and so there's a lot more awareness. I mean, clearly, there's a lot more to do. Clearly, in terms of business needs to also take its responsibilities. We need a transparent supply chain which is audited and that audit needs to be transparent. And we need accountability. Governments, yes, we do need to make it more of a priority but I do think we are making steps, I don't want to be the doom and gloom merchant, there are solutions out there because I've seen communities change. Empowerment can happen quite quickly.

AK And, Beate, are you optimistic about the way forward?

BA It's an area where change will only emerge very slowly, because it's linked to a change of attitudes and behaviours of different groups of people, be it government, business and the people concerned. I'd like to come back quickly on the economic interest, because Andrew is also right in saying that as long as we don't understand these economic drivers, we won't really move the agenda forward. And that's very true. I mean, that's one of the reasons why we have worked on the profit figures, we will produce a new figure this year, it's most likely to be much higher than the one you have quoted in the beginning. We need to understand the economic interest and we need to get business involved. And it's very much on the ILO's agenda.

AK Fabulous. So, in conclusion, we need to really understand the money and who's profiting and understand it as a criminal business as well. Well, I'm afraid that's all we've got time for today. My thanks to my guests: Beate Andrees; Romana Cacchioli; Andrew Wallis; Leonardo Sakamoto and Harriet Grant and Min. My name is Annie Kelly; the producer was Matt Hill. Thanks for listening.